Tarlton - The Papa Theses

Writing about electronic and instrumental music can be difficult, so I'm going to keep this one short. Around midnight the other night, I became aware that Tarlton's new album is finished.

And it is wicked.

The Papa Theses is the second album from the former Minneapolitan (now based out of Seattle). While the first album was impressive technically, I had difficulty connecting with it. In practice, Tarlton's "songs" feel more like pieces in the artistic sense than songs in the well, song, sense. That's a quality that takes some getting used to. The Papa Theses puts rhythm at the forefront like Tarlton's debut, Van, did. However, in production, Theses feels more accessible.

The band's only member, Brett Bullion, once again proves himself to possess not only a great amount of technical ability, but also a very strong sense of song construction. It's easy for a lot of techno/instrumental artists to get caught up in pushing the types of sounds they can make further while neglecting the art of songwriting. On The Papa Theses, Bullion pushes himself sonically without forgetting to engage audience members. It's a very cool album.

Up top are two tracks off of Tarlton's last album. The Papa Theses is best taken in as a whole, so we did not post any MP3s from it. You can download both Tarlton albums here.

Tarlton MySpace Page

(April Wright)


Disclaimer: Tarlton is a friend of mine (and Ian's). But, well, you know the drill.